The parents of a 16-year-old boy who was mistakenly detained by police at gunpoint last May outside Deering High School are suing the cities of Portland and South Portland.
Parents Amber and Nathan Miller say their son was leaving the school to go to lunch with friends when he was surrounded by police officers wearing tactical gear.
The Millers allege that police violated their son's Fourth and Fourteenth amendment rights by keeping him in detention even after realizing they had the wrong person.
"Once officers realize their mistake, the Constitution does not allow them to finish the detention by handcuffing the person, searching them and questioning them anyway," Marie Miller, an attorney with the non-profit Institute for Justice, said Wednesday during a press call with reporters. Miller is representing the plaintiffs and has no relation to the Miller family.
The interaction, South Portland police have said, lasted five minutes. The department released the body and dash camera footage of the incident last summer.
Upon release of the videos, Police Chief Dan Ahern said the footage showed officers "appropriately and lawfully" engaging with someone who matched the description of the adult suspect for whom they had an arrest warrant.
“I feel for the innocent young people who were caught in the middle of this police action that day," Ahern said back in August. "I commend the way our officers handled the situation given the circumstances and information they had at the time. We are committed to continually evaluating and learning from calls of this nature in an effort to best serve and safeguard our community."
Amber Miller, the boy's mother, said she believes police policies on search and detention procedures should be changed.
"We really intend for this to help make the police take a more critical look at the procedures that they're using to make sure that we are keeping our communities safe," she said.
A spokesperson for the city of South Portland said Wednesday that legal counsel will review the complaint, which has been filed in federal court in Maine.
